The fundamental problem is that HTML is technically stateless but a web app is not. So to do anything that needs state (think google maps, or a responsive webs

The fundamental problem is that HTML is technically stateless but a web app is not. So to do anything that needs state (think google maps, or a responsive website) you need to either build or buy a way to manage that state, while working inside the confines of HTML/HTTP. In many ways you can look at react, vue, etc as javascript applications that use HTML/DOM to render. The problem is that they don't really see themselves like that, so the way they present stuff is sort of fucked up. And even after all these years the DOM handling stuff hasn't adjusted to the reality of web 2.0...because presumably the devs want to keep backward compatibility with hand-written css/html/js. The DOM is another one of those hacky things that survived and thrived. If browser makers, the standards people, framework makers, and web devs got together, they could theoretically simplify a lot of this shit going forwards, but they don't because it's too hard. Instead, we have these sort of layers of bullshit that live forever.